“All right,” I said, breaking in.  I could see that his arguments were of the circular variety that always came back to the starting point.  “But, as a favor to me, would you kindly ask the proprietor to request the head cook to communicate with the carriage starter and have him inform the waiter that when in future I ring the bathroom bell in a given manner—­to wit:  one long, determined ring followed by three short, passionate rings—­it may be regarded as a signal for towels?”

So saying, I turned on my heel and went away, for I could tell he was getting ready to begin all over again.  Later on I found out for myself that, in this particular hotel, when you ring for the waiter or the maid the bell sounds in the service room, where those functionaries are supposed to be stationed; but when you ring for the manservant a small arm-shaped device like a semaphore drops down over your outer door.  But what has the manservant done that he should be thus discriminated against?  Why should he not have a bell of his own?  So far as I might judge, the poor fellow has few enough pleasures in life as it is.  Why should he battle with the intricacies of a block-signal system when everybody else round the place has a separate bell?  And why all this mystery and mummery over so simple and elemental a thing as a towel?

To my mind, it merely helps to prove that among the English the art of bathing is still in its infancy.  The English claim to have discovered the human bath and they resent mildly the assumption that any other nation should become addicted to it; whereas I argue that the burden of the proof shows we do more bathing to the square inch of surface than the English ever did.  At least, we have superior accommodations for it.

The day is gone in this country when Saturday night was the big night for indoor aquatic sports and pastimes; and no gentleman as was a gentleman would call on his ladylove and break up her plans for the great weekly ceremony.  There may have been a time in certain rural districts when the bathing season for males practically ended on September fifteenth, owing to the water in the horsepond becoming chilled; but that time has passed.  Along with every modern house that is built to-day, in country or town, we expect bathrooms and plenty of them.  With us the presence of a few bathtubs more or less creates no great amount of excitement—­nor does the mere sight of open plumbing particularly stir our people; whereas in England a hotelkeeper who has bathrooms on the premises advertises the fact on his stationery.

If in addition to a few bathrooms a Continental hotelkeeper has a decrepit elevator he makes more noise over it than we do over a Pompeian palmroom or an Etruscan roofgarden; he hangs a sign above his front door testifying to his magnificent enterprise in this regard.  The Continental may be a born hotelkeeper, as has been frequently claimed for him; but the trouble is he usually has no hotel to keep.  It is as though you set an interior decorator to run a livery stable and expected him to make it attractive.  He may have the talents, but he is lacking in the raw material.